“Oh! it’s nothing,” Bianca said; “only if you are done talking about Penelope, I should like to give you all a piece of advice.”
The company were unanimously anxious to hear. Gentle suggestions they often heard from this young lady; but it was perhaps the first time they had ever heard her propose deliberately to give advice to any one, and still less to a company of elders.
“My advice is this,” she said: “whenever any of you take your first walk in a strange city, look at the house you live in before you go away from it, and see how it is made, and what number it is, and make sure of the name of the street; otherwise, though you may find every place you do not want, you may never find your own house again. That’s all I have to say.”
“Excellent advice!” Mr. Vane said. “But may I ask what made you think of it just now?”
“First let me tell you a little story,” said Bianca. “Once upon a time a young woman I know went to live in a strange city where they spoke a language she did not understand. The very first day, almost
the first hour, she went out for a walk, and went alone; but her mind was so full of the place she was going to that she took no note of the place she was leaving. No matter what a nice time she had before she started to return; that doesn’t belong to the story, which is entirely tragical. Her troubles began when she thought that in two minutes she would be at her own door. Come to think about it, she had no idea where her own door was, in which of three or four radiating streets it was to be found, or what the number of it was, nor how it looked. So she wandered up and down, and to and fro, in the hot sun, and passed her home without recognizing it any more than the Signora’s portrait up there recognizes her husband; and at last, when she was just ready to cry, and to believe that the house and everybody in it had been bewitched and whisked off to some other continent, and that she had to go blowing about for ever in that lost way, what do you think happened?”
The story-teller had reason to be gratified by the expression of intense interest with which her audience waited for the catastrophe.
“Well,” she continued, “this poor wanderer happened to glance up a house-front as she was passing, and she saw out of a window a hand laid on the frame—just the hand of some one who stood inside. It was very handsome and white, and on one finger of it was a ring that she recognized. And then the tears of sorrow that she was about to shed changed to tears of joy, and she said: ‘O darling hand of my papa, with my own good-for-nothing cameo face on it—’”
And Bianca finished her story by flying up out of her chair, and rushing to hang on her father’s
shoulder, and kiss the hand that had found her.